Céline Dion opened floodgates for pop stars in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS — It used to be where pop stars would go when there was nowhere else to go. If you were playing Las Vegas, it was time to check your career for a pulse. With record and ticket sales waning everywhere else, you’d slink out into this strange funhouse of a city in the middle of the Nevada desert to try to squeeze out the last sparks and bucks to be had, selling your wares to folks looking for a break from playing Texas hold ’em.

Céline Dion changed all that. The Québécois superstar came, saw and conquered — as she usually does — and all of a sudden, every second A-list pop star wanted a residency on the Strip.

Dion returned to the Vegas concert scene this week to kick off another series of shows at the Colosseum in Caesars Palace, following a one-year hiatus.

Her Vegas revolution started when her husband and manager, René Angélil, a frequent visitor to Las Vegas, had an epiphany: Why not have an artist in the prime of her career headline a long-term series of shows at one of the major casinos?

Thus was born A New Day, which premièred at the Colosseum in March 2003.

There were plenty of naysayers in the business at the beginning, but the critics quickly went silent when the cash started rolling in. That first Dion residency grossed more than $400 million by the time it wound down its nearly five-year run in 2007. (Her second Vegas residency, simply titled Celine, debuted in 2011.) It also changed how major artists can approach live performance.

Elton John was the first to follow Céline Dion to Vegas, with his Red Piano residency running from 2004 to 2009 at Caesars Palace.

Since then, many of the world’s top pop stars have followed Dion’s path to Vegas for lengthy engagements. The rush onto the bandwagon started with Elton John, who began performing at the Colosseum in 2004, and continued with Cher, Bette Midler, Rod Stewart, Shania Twain, Mariah Carey and the double bill of Reba McEntire and Brooks & Dunn. All of these stars have been regulars at the 4,296-seat Colosseum.

Another theatre, the AXIS, entered the same market in late 2013 with the première of the Britney Spears show Piece of Me. It’s still running at the venue, which is part of the Planet Hollywood complex just down the Strip from Caesars. (Planet Hollywood is also owned by Caesars.) Jennifer Lopez is scheduled to debut her Vegas show there in January.

John Nelson, the Las Vegas-based senior vice-president of concert giant AEG Live, was there right at the start of Dion’s Vegas project.

“From the first moment, I knew that this could be a great hit,” Nelson said in an interview this week at the Spago restaurant in the Forum Shops mall at Caesars.

“Not a lot of people agreed,” he said. “A lot of people in the music business thought this was a crazy idea. Who would take such a risk on an artist who could sell one or two or three nights in an arena here? Who would take the risk of trying to present her for 200 nights a year? That was Céline’s schedule in 2003. Five nights in a row, 40 weeks in a year.”

But AEG, Caesars, and Dion and Angélil rolled the dice and won the jackpot. They proved the axiom “if you build it, they will come.” From the start of the modern pop biz, the core philosophy was that artists had to go out and tour the world. But these visionaries turned that on its head. Instead, they put the star in one venue and had the world come to her.

Shania Twain didn’t hold back in Still the One, her residency at Caesars Palace, which ran from 2012 to 2014.

Of course, it’s not a model that works for every artist. If you’re going to fill a 4,296-seat theatre for hundreds of nights at a top ticket price, you’ve got to have real drawing power. In other words, emerging artists, alternative rockers and one-hit wonders need not apply.

“The artists that we focus on are those that have a depth of catalogue, of hits, of album sales, touring success, the number of tickets sold on the road, and who have had careers of great longevity,” said Nelson. “It’s much more challenging to apply this business model to a emerging artist that hasn’t developed that really deep fan base yet.”

Most likely, this can only work in Las Vegas — a city that attracts around 40 million visitors a year. (New York draws a greater number of tourists, but Manhattan has a completely different entertainment infrastructure, built around long-running Broadway shows.) Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté understood the potential of this extraordinary entertainment marketplace, which is why the Cirque has eight permanent shows in casinos scattered around Las Vegas. So it’s only fitting that Angélil and Dion had their inspiration for a permanent Vegas show when they saw Cirque du Soleil’s O at the Bellagio back in 2000. (In fact, they went and hired that show’s director, Franco Dragone, to direct A New Day, which incorporated Cirque-like dance elements.)

“Las Vegas affords (artists) the opportunity because there are so many visitors from all over the world that love entertainment and who are coming to look for shows,” said Jason Gastwirth, senior vice-president of marketing and entertainment for Caesars Entertainment, which owns Caesars Palace.

“That’s why you haven’t seen the residency model pop up in other places,” he added. “Because Vegas is unique that way. People come to Vegas looking for the greatest entertainment, world-class restaurants, great retail, excellent hotel products. … Because of that, we’re able to support these shows — in certain cases for 70 or so shows a year, which is unbelievable. Even on a tour, that’s a large number of shows. But the fact it’s in one place speaks to the strength of Vegas.”

And the performers love the concept of a residency at a theatre.

“The artists like being able to be in one place, to set up a show in a theatre environment versus the challenges of travelling into different venues,” Gastwirth said. “When you think about these shows, they have perfect sound, perfect lighting. It gives the artist an opportunity to have a better lifestyle. A lot of our artists also have families. So they’re able to bring their families here, not be on the road all the time. Vegas is often closer to where they live.”

Sitting in the Colosseum Wednesday morning, Denis Savage — who is director of operations for Dion’s show — agreed with Gastwirth that this is a fabulous model for artists.

“It’s certainly a lot easier than touring,” he said. “It allows you to do things you couldn’t if you were touring. The stage in here is twice the width of an arena stage. It’s 120 feet wide. A typical arena stage will be 60 feet. It’s a luxury. Plus, you get to polish the show a lot more than if you were taking the show up and down every day.”

Oh, and there’s one other plus, Savage noted as we ended our chat in the lobby of the Colosseum: The weather in Vegas is pretty nice!

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